C/C++

Open-source Distributed Pub/Sub Event System

Devin A. Rychetnik — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:46:03 GMT

This is a huge open-source contribution from Microsoft: http://www.codeplex.com/pubsub.

The Distributed Pub/Sub Event System is a solution for cross-process and/or cross-server scenarios where a large amount of event handshaking is required and low latency is important. Basically, this architecture was designed for speed.

Even if you can't think of a usage scenario for this code-base in your stack right now, I strongly encourage you to just crack open the source and take a look. I personally think the design is a prime example of true software engineering craftmanship, which is simply a thing of beauty.

By the way, I was the one who tested this bad boy before it was released. Therefore, I can't claim rights to the elegant design, but I can claim rights to some of the quality--hopefully not the lack thereof!

Thread Synchronization in Windows Vista

Devin A. Rychetnik — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:27:00 GMT

Here is a useful article containing an overview of the new simplified thread synchronization capabilities in Windows Vista: http://www.codeguru.com/columns/kate/article.php/c13387/. These include CONDITION_VARIABLE, AcquireSRWLockExclusive/ReleaseSRWLockExclusive, and AcquireSRWLockShared/ReleaseSRWLockShared.

Concurrent Programming for Windows

Devin A. Rychetnik — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 06:43:00 GMT

I came across a few useful articles on AMD's developer website about programming Windows applications to take advantage of multi-core machines:

Taking Advantage of Concurrent Programming for Windows, Part 1: The Simplest Multi-core Parallelism That Could Possibly Work
http://www.devx.com/amd/Article/32246

Taking Advantage of Concurrent Programming for Windows, Part 2: Multi-core Programming in .NET
http://www.devx.com/amd/Article/32301

.NET C# Interoperability

Devin Rychetnik — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:24:00 GMT

When dealing with managed code and unmanaged code together there are several nuances that change the way that interoperability is implemented and things can easily get confusing. For instance, dealing with Win32 COM dlls, plain vanilla Win32 dlls, and ActiveX controls from managed C# all have their own means. An interop assembly can be created for Win32 COM dlls so that it can be referenced from a C# project directly. However, to use regular Win32 dlls from a C# project, you must utilize Platform Invoke. Further, for ActiveX controls you need to generate a wrapper control, which can then be used to reference from you C# project. All these methods are explained in more detail here: http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_csref/html/c025b2e0-2357-4c27-8461-118f0090aeff.asp.

Memory Management in Windows

Devin Rychetnik — Tue, 23 May 2006 04:13:00 GMT

Alright, if you need to get down to the nitty gritty of Windows memory management like I have to right now, then you don't want to miss these four articles (one of which I posted earlier but will include here again for the sake of comprehensiveness and conveniance).

The Virtual-Memory Manager in Windows NT: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dngenlib/html/msdn_ntvmm.asp

Managing Virtual Memory in Win32: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dngenlib/html/msdn_virtmm.asp

Managing Memory-Mapped Files in Win32: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dngenlib/html/msdn_manamemo.asp

Managing Heap Memory in Win32: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dngenlib/html/msdn_heapmm.asp

Windows C Programming

Devin Rychetnik — Wed, 17 May 2006 02:05:00 GMT

I'm currently working with a system that includes a shared memory manager written in C. This has forced me to brush up on some of the Windows programming concepts as well as learn a bunch of new ones. Alas, the Windows developer's world is extremely different from the web developer's.

What is a buffer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_%28computer_science%29

What is a pointer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointer

What is a handler?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_handler

What is a semaphore?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_%28programming%29

What is a mutex?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutex
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/mutex.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemThreadingMutexClassTopic.asp

What are calloc, malloc, realloc, and free?
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/calloc.html
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/malloc.html
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/realloc.html
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/free.html

What is a memory mapped file?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dngenlib/html/msdn_manamemo.asp